Micro-blogging is good for idealets and infotainment, but it really is turning the web into a mindless medium like TV. Of course, there will always be the equivalent of PBS trying valiantly to raise the bar somewhat. Blogs will always have the possibility of transmitting real knowledge.
- Paul W. Homer

The interesting thing for me is I think we have lost the definition of what a blog is. Everybody jumped up and down about what Steve Rubel did, but really I see his change as a shift of platform. If he posted that same content on wordpress, nobody would have said a word. Just because he did it on posterous and called it a lifestream, people took issue with it. So, what is our definition then?
- Robert

Dave - I read through the link you sent, thanks for the information. So, in what ways do you think posterous goes against this definition?
- Robert
from email

I think Steve still has a weblog, he's just submitting posts to it in a "different" way. Like Dave's link says a weblog is "... a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser." Pretty much sums it up, I think. Steve's post is going to generate attention, and debate, but in the end it's a weblog.
- Rob Fahrni

Robert, I know you're asking Dave a question, but I don't think the Posterious way goes against the definition. If I'm not mistaken Radio could post via e-mail, and I know Blogger supports this feature. Maybe I need to dig into Posterious a bit more but isn't that what it does?
- Rob Fahrni

Rob - That is my point. This in my mind is one of the major problems with looking for a "new name" for these social products. We see it as something different because it is called something different. Posterous, from what I can see so far, allows for the writer to interact with their "weblog" in a different way, just as you said...
- Robert
from email

Dave - I think your "huh?" was towards me... We call Posterous a "life stream", I say it is a blog, that we have given a different name to. That is what I am saying.Rob - I agree with you 100%, and that is my point exactly. I keep reading these post about blogging being dead, or blogging being alive... but those that say they are not "blogging" are still "blogging" Maybe I am not making sense, but I hope I am...
- Robert
from email

Robert - Precisely! I think Posterious is trying to find a why to differentiate their product, so they've coined a new phrase. It's still a weblog, how the data arrives may be different, but it's just a weblog all the same. When I read Steve's story last night, from his new site, I thought I was going to find a link on it to something "new and innovative", then I realized I was AT the actualy site, his "life stream."
- Rob Fahrni

Rob - YES... That is what I am saying... Same with Tumblr in my view, it is a weblog... Blogging is not dead at all in my view...
- Robert
from email

Blogology is a still too young science, and definitio usually comes when plays are over. What I feel sad for is the lack of opportunity future literature and social behaviour experts will suffer not using post's content ( and graphics ) as sources for studying today's world zeitgeist. Borges prophecy is at work, few understands - too many doesn't even know what they're writing about: a perfect scene for the conscious and devoted mankind studious: are they supposed to be extinguished animals ? Ciao, forgive my poor english .
- valerio fiandra
from iPhone

Robert, the photo sharing site you've used recently is structurally a blog too. It differs from normal blog software mainly in that the chronology is by date of occurrence, not date of posting.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo

It's funny that this sentence and a few lines from Anthony Trollope's autobiography should have crossed paths in my consciousness on the same day, since it's almost the same idea, thrown back two temporal orders of magnitude. Trollope tells of a correspondent, a vicar, who had enjoyed his clerical novels but was upset by Lady Glencors'a contemplation of adultery in the Pallisers series. They exchanged letters but it didn't satisfy. The parson proposed a week in the country since the topic was too long for letters.
- Amyloo

Bruce - Very true! I'm glad that you are not working hard to call it something different. I'm loving it so far, even though I have not had a lot of time to put a bunch of pics up...
- Robert
from email

This is silly. Blogging isn't defined by the tool, it's defined by who's doing it. Read the piece I pointed to. I don't mean click on the link and hit the Back buttton, click the link and READ.
- Dave Winer

Agreed, Dave. Heck, we blogged back in the day via FTP uploads; that's what moved you towards developing "Edit This Page", in fact (IIRC).
- Ken Kennedy

Dave - I did read through it, and I agree that a blog is NOT defined by a tool, I think that is what we have been saying. I do not see where we are at odds on our viewpoints, please expound.
- Robert
from email

This subject keeps coming back - blogging will never die.
- Jesse Stay

Before Web 1.0 we listened, conversed, collaborated and then we wrote. Writing was the synthesis of all the thinking that occurred in the first steps. In the new medium, the thinking process is the streams, both personal and community. Blogging is the synthesis of this new kind of community thought process.
- Joolio

I think a large percentage of bloggers were really microbloggers, they just didn't have the correct apps to do that. The people that actually have something to say will keep blogging and those that just like to say something small or share something interesting will continue microblogging, or lifestreaming, or whatever variant you want to name it. Blogging is akin to publishing articles and papers or the more classical public letter writing, there will always be a place for it, and it's generally among the more progressively elite of society. Microblogging is more akin to gossip, graffiti, private letter writing, and socializing. I think usage will sway to the same groups as it did in those classic communication categories.
- xero

This was known since the times of IRC: you can only have idle chatter or quick focused questions at that speed.
- Michele Costabile

Michele, if that premise is true, then kids only absorb important life-long lessons from their parent(s) when they're sat down for a full length lecture. No? :)
- Micah

The best food for thought always come in easily digestible chunks, however, sometimes you need to digest some larger/harder stuff to give you the ability to digest that chunk.
- xero

This isn't a fight. I love all this stuff. I was just saying what I think.
- Dave Winer

Question: Of those of you out there who use posterous, do you use it as a replacement of your blog, a mirror of your blog or something different?
- Curt Mercadante

One of the things I like about blogging is the ability to not finish a thought, not to try so hard to say all I have to say or say come to any definite conclusion in a single post. The unfinished thought is what encourages conversation. Let someone else add to your thought. Let others challenge your incomplete premise. I don't know everything, why pretend I do? My thoughts are never finished.
- Jack&Cleo

Just because you can finish a thought, doesn't mean people will read it.
- Will Higgins™

Tell me about it. That happened earlier in this very thread. But at least you ca read it yourself.
- Dave Winer

Just as your diary became your journal and then your log, your log has become your stream. The web has become your life..... AND SO IT WAS, that in the year naught-nine, the web-log was renamed to life-stream, dissected, and it's pieces scattered about the hundreds of "cloud" services, from which it could fall as raindrops of thought, pinging here and there in an attempt to spread ideas to where they were needed the most.
- Joel Bennett

There's NOTHING wrong with brevity. There is a time and a place for discussion and lengthy discourse.
- Will Higgins™

Matthew DeVries: that covers definitions 1 and 2, yet the 3rd is an "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result," where in this case the expected result was to explain how new platforms prevent thoughts from being finished, and the actual result was to the contrary :D
- Mike Chelen